For the past 6 months I've been busy putting together a 141 page application to the EU's FP7 research infrastructures program. Specifically INFRA-2010-1.2.3: Virtual Research Communities. I am pleased to say the application has been successful and we have been awarded 4.75M Euros in support of the project. ViBRANT (Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy) is about integrating several major EU funded infrastructures to construct a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for the taxonomic and systematic community. ViBRANT builds on the Scratchpad project, and is a partnership of 17 institutions that have a proven track record of delivering the social and technical components necessary to deliver this system. 

Officially, ViBRANT is in the "negotiation phase". This is the time when the legal and financial details are sorted out, so needless so say, things could technically still go wrong. Nevertheless, I’m confident everything will go forward. ViBRANT is likely to have a late 2010 start to minimise the overlap with EDIT and maximise benefits between the two projects. For example our kick off meeting in Jan 2011 is likely to be times to coincide with the EDIT final meeting. In the coming months you are likely to here a lot more about the project. In the mean time here is the abstract and very basic details of the eight workpackages:

ABSTRACT
Biodiversity science brings information science and technologies to bear on the data and information generated by the study of organisms, their genes, and their interactions. ViBRANT will help focus the collective output of biodiversity science, making it more transparent, accountable, and accessible. Mobilising these data will address global environmental challenges, contribute to sustainable development, and promote the conservation of biological diversity. Through a platform of web based informatics tools and services we have built a successful data-publishing framework (Scratchpads) that allows distributed groups of scientists to create their own virtual research communities supporting biodiversity science. The infrastructure is highly user-oriented, focussing on the needs of research networks through flexible and scalable system architecture, offering adaptable user interfaces for the development of various services. In just 28 months the Scratchpads have been adopted by over 120 communities in more than 60 countries, embracing over 1,500 users. ViBRANT will distribute the management, hardware infrastructure and software development of this system and connect with the broader landscape of biodiversity initiatives including PESI, Biodiversity Heritage Library (Europe), GBIF and EoL. The system will also inform the design of the LifeWatch Service Centre, part of the ESFRI roadmap. ViBRANT will extend the userbase, reaching out to new multidisciplinary communities including citizen scientists by offering an enhanced suite of services and functionality.

Workpackages are grouped under research, service and networking activities which explains why they are not consecutively numbered.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
WP2: Technical architecture
Workpackage 2 will develop and deliver the technical architecture required to host, integrate and sustain the Scratchpad framework within the ViBRANT consortium. 

WP7: Biodiversity literature access and data mining
Bibliographies, article level mark-up and structured annotation of taxonomic literature, to improve access to resources such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

SERVICE ACTIVITIES
WP5: Interaction and services
Integration of external computational tools and services that act on data held within Scratchpad instances. Specifically, molecular and morphological identification services, tools and facilities for data analysis.

WP6: Scholarly publishing
To facilitate automated submission, review and publication of species descriptions and taxonomic acts from the Scratchpads and GBIF through scholarly publishers via standard XML-based structures.

NETWORKING ACTIVITIES
WP1: Management, co-ordination and administration
Consortium financial management as required by the Commission and integration of the activities undertaken within the consortium.

WP3: Training, outreach and community support
Organisation and delivery of training resources in order to support and extend the user communities working with ViBRANT products, including sociological studies of ViBRANT’s user- base.

WP4: Standardisation
Coordination, development and mobilisation of externally standardized ontology’s throughout the ViBRANT framework.

WP8: Ecological and conservation data mobilisation
Extending the reach of the ViBRANT infrastructure beyond the traditional taxonomic and systematic research communities (e.g. citizen scientists, GBIF node user network and IUCN conservation communities) via cross cutting analysis and visualisation tools.